Ferman Neal Sullins spent his adult life helping others. He was decorated for his service as a World War II Army medic, including at Normandy.

He had a long civilian career at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Dallas, where he became a national labor leader for government employees.

Sullins, 90, of Rowlett died Tuesday of stroke complications in hospice at C.C. Young Assisted Living in Dallas.

Mass will be celebrated at 1 p.m. Friday at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Rowlett. He will be buried in Sacred Heart Cemetery.

Sullins was most proud of being a lifelong Democrat, said his son, Joey Sullins of Santa Rosa, Calif.

“He firmly believed in being your brother’s keeper and helping people that needed help,” his son said.

Sullins was born in Justin and grew up in Hill and Rockwall counties. In the mid 1930s, his family moved to a farm near Rowlett, where Sullins met Walderine Burkard of Liberty Grove. They later married.

Sullins joined the Army in 1940 and was trained as a medic at Fort Sam Houston.

As a sergeant, he was scheduled to land at Omaha Beach on June 7, the second day of the D-Day invasion. But before dawn on the 7th, his ship, the USS Susan B. Anthony, struck a free-floating mine and started sinking.

Sullins and his fellow medics were transferred to a landing craft with a group of infantry headed for the battle on the beach. The landing craft became stuck on a tank trap and was soon hit by an enemy shell. The blast killed all of the infantry but no medics.

“My dad told his squad to go over the side,” Joey Sullins said. “They went off the side and started swimming in about 25 feet of water.”

Several members of Sullins’ group — all carrying 140 pounds of medical supplies — drowned while trying for the beach. Once ashore the medics began treating casualties, his son said.

“He said he lost count, but it had to have been several hundred wounded — both GIs and Germans — that he treated over that next 24 hours,” he said.

Sullins, who received more than one Purple Heart, was wounded at least three times. He was hit by shrapnel during an air raid in London and was hurt in the battle for Brest, France, in September 1944.

His time in combat came to an end in October 1944 in St. Vith, Belgium, a restaging area. As he stepped inside a mess tent, an artillery barrage struck. Sullins awoke in a hospital in England. He arrived back in Dallas in late November and married his childhood sweetheart on Dec. 21. Mrs. Sullins died in 2006.

He was awarded a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster.

After his enlistment, Sullins began his civilian career as an orderly at the VA hospital. He was a urology technician when he retired 42 years later.

He also was a skilled contract negotiator for Dallas federal hospital workers, the region and the nation.

Sullins also is survived by two daughters, Dienna Poll of Dallas and Sandra Conley of Lancaster; eight grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.